People should seriously take a competence test before playing Left 4 Dead.

[Onyx Oblivion]

I don't really like L4D...I know...blasphemy, right? Heck, its the unpredictability that I hate...I like outsmarting my opponents, using their AI patterns against them.

But I do agree with your thread.

 

[maffro]

This is why you should buy the PC version of co-op games. Console users are such tards.

Do you know me? No? Don't make blanket conjectures that include me then.

Anyway, while I see a lot of stupid shit in Left 4 Dead, I happen to be very good at living.
The thing I have a problem with is if I just spent 20 minutes with the group waiting to get out of the elevator because some fuckhead blocked it, I DO NOT expect to be taking that final stretch slowly. It's a death sentence. Zipping to the safe room is the best bet at that point in the map, hands down.
There are just certain times when I'm about to get into the safe room and a horde comes, or someone gets pounced, and I seriously can't be bothered to help them.
What's that? There are only three of us left and you decided to check out some rooms and have a hunter on you because you fell too far behind? Sorry, no dice. Horde is coming and we're out numbered. 3/4 victory points is better then effort points.
While some of your advice is nice, don't expect the people whom ignore it, to suddenly follow it.

Also, there is nothing wrong with pouncing a strangled survivor. It speeds up their death and allows the smoker the chance to go grab another survivor.

It is NOT alright to pounce a strangled survivor. That's just bad play.

That smoker has a lengthy recharge, since he actually made lasting contact to the survivor. If you wait patiently you can pounce the survivor that comes to rescue him, meaning the rest of the team will have to fall back also, buying you precious moments of damage. If you pounce him the next survivor will kill the smoker, and kill you too.

 

[TheMatt]

Wow.

I agree with everything you said except for the tea bagging.

I'm sry, but it amuses me.

like a lot.

Okay, but teabagging is supposed to be an asserstion of your dominance over the person you just defeated, from my perspective. Teabagging one of you own teammates is just stupid.

If by stupid, you mean hilarious, then I'm with you. I don't mean excessively.

Once per standard playing period let's say.

 

[Monkfish Acc.]

How do you feel about people who never play outside of expert and like to pick on the witch every now and then?

 

[Elurindel]

Also, there is nothing wrong with pouncing a strangled survivor. It speeds up their death and allows the smoker the chance to go grab another survivor.

Nonesense. The Smoker has to spend an age recharging his strangle attack before he can grab another survivor. Go pounce somebody else.

Also, I agree with the rant. Left 4 Dead is very cruel to idiots. One player we had once ran on ahead of everybody before we'd picked up our medkits and ammo, and moments later, we hear an assault rifle going off, and get the message that he's startled the Witch! Out of utter disdain for his stupidity, we carry on getting ammo whilst the Witch rips him to shreds. He then chides us for being slow, saying that "somebody had to do it!". No. No he did not. He was just being a damned idiot.

 

[Iron Mal]

The problem lies with both the game itself and the people who play it.

The strong emphasis on co-op is a bit too unforgiving (especially on the higher difficulties). You are constantltly vulnerable to pretty much everything the game can throw at you unless your team mates are within arm's reach of you and are in an altruistic mood.

I understand the appeal of co-op (a team of people working towards a common goal) but there is a limit to how dependant you should be on your team mates. For example, being grabbed by a smoker or pounced by a hunter should not be the end of the world as far as an individual is concerned, is there any real reason as to why you can't free yourself from these attacks? (it should be much more difficult to do it alone than with help, granted, but it should be possible to free yourself unaided).

Left 4 Dead should have been a bit more loose and redeeming in terms of the punishment for abandoning your team mates. In short, it saps any form or individuality or independance (and thus any sense of fun or glory) from the game since the players have to operate as a single 'hive mind' to stand any chance of survival.

The players themselves don't help much either.

Granted, you do sometimes get suicideal idiots who believe they are the immortal captain of team kick-ass and rush in guns blazing. They might get a 5th of the way through the level (if they're good) before they're taken down and ask for a helping hand.

When this happens they'll often get one of two responses: the 'compassionate' reply (don't worry, we're here. Try to be more careful and work with us a bit more, ok?) or the 'hardcore' response (guys, just leave him, the guy's a dick anyway! anyone else wanna boot him?).

People who give the former reply normally play the game for fun (I like these people) while those who give the latter are those elitist weirdos who think the former are jelous of their 1337 ski11z (you may have heard one of them asking you for headshots in CoD4). In other words, by ripping into these people for being arseholes it could be argued that you're no better than they are (is it possible that some of these people act this way because they themselves have recieved abuse from other players?).

Ideally, every person who plays l4d should be co-operative, open minded, altruistic and calm (the kind of person you would want to have with you in a zombie appocolypse), unfortuneatly, the number of gamers I've seen that posess said qualities is very small.

 

[Pennyy9]

Berlin called, their wall is missing man. I concur on the part that I have never played a L4D game without someone who can mess it up. I prefer to play with a mic, even though I have the Halo3 mic that is starting to get funky. When I dont play with a mic, and I get my choice of character, i play as Zoe. My gamertag is Pennyy9. And boy do I get called a girl a lot. It's mostly my fault, I wager, but what ends up happening is they don't bother saving me, or they just don't want to heal me because I apparently " Am a girl and cannot play games." I'm a male, I usually get the highest infected kill count, and I can solo a tank on a good day. I'm not a bad player, but because of my Gamertag, and my character choice, It's girly time.

Thanks for your post, Ive seen ones like it all over; from the flood forum at bungie, to the Ninja Gaiden forms. The way I've found to avoid all the horrible players is to play on a higher difficulty, be the host, and kick anyone with no mic. It might seem like I'm contradicting myself here, but I make sure to use a mic when I play on extreme. My mic doesnt work? No play, because its about the TEAM.

 

[FrankDux]

Wow.

I agree with everything you said except for the tea bagging.

I'm sry, but it amuses me.

like a lot.

Okay, but teabagging is supposed to be an asserstion of your dominance over the person you just defeated, from my perspective. Teabagging one of you own teammates is just stupid.

If by stupid, you mean hilarious, then I'm with you. I don't mean excessively.

Once per standard playing period let's say.

If it's one of your friends than yeah, I can see where you are coming from. Otherwise it's just a dick move

 

[Uncompetative]

Er... Play with friends? You know, people that you know in real life?

 

[sebar nl]

goooo MiloP!

 

[Anstrup]

Well, isn't the idea to give the zombiepocalypse feel? If it happened in real you'd probably end upp having to trust dickheads.

 

[spikevamp]

I think it would make a lot of sense if all the achievements that you have well...achieved counted as some form of "experience Points" ,or whatever the Hell the nerds call them, and put you in games according to skill level rather than pot luck...good room,bad room, pants on head retarded room.

Just my 2 pence

 

[Ghost]

HAHA! 100% true man. oh and the pc version certainly has a better community, from personal experience

 

[Da_Schwartz]

Amen.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I have to second this in general. L4D is a game where my enjoyment is directly related to the competence of my team. I don't mind losing, in fact the game is best played when success and failure are measured in the span of a few points of health. Yet, frequently I am in a game with people who are utterly unskilled (this aspect is forgivable, not everyone is adept at fps games), or people who seem incapable of graspin the concept.

My biggest grips:

As the survivors - keep moving forward. If you need to stop to heal/reload/get a new gun that's fine but keep moving forward. Every second you waste is another opportunity for failure.

If one survivor is still alive and others are incapacitated, for the LOVE OF GOD try and save them. You get the same points for 1 survivor (if you reach the end of the map) as you do for no survivors. Rest assured those poor disabled folk will do their best to help you out so you're not entirely alone.

Keep up with the group, especially at critical moments where moving forward results in an impassable barrier. Nothing is worse than losing a man because he did't jump down with the rest of the team and there's nothing you can do to save him.

As the infected - jumping in on another kill is bad form. If a smoker has someone pinned and you're a hunter, don't pounce on the victim. Instead, wait for the inevitable survivor rescue party and pounce on THEM.

Work together - the survivors are far deadlier than you are, try to coordinate your attacks with others to maximize the damage you do.

If someone has knocked a survivor down as a tank, attack one of the survivors still standing. Pouncing someone who'se out of the fight already doesn't help the cause. The fewer people pouring lead into the tank the better it is for your team.

 

[nilus2k]

There is a simple solution to your problem. Just don't play with the general public. There are plenty of X-Box live gaming groups out there. Find one that fits your personality and just stick to playing with them.

 

[Iron Mal]

I have seen many people on here commenting on whether you should (as a hunter in versus) pounce on a survivor who has been grabbed by a smoker (since it is apparantly unsporting, in which case fair enough, you have a point).

In the instruction manual it says that a smoker's ability to grab and stun survivors at long range is useful in conjunction with boomer vomit or a hunter's pounce.

I'm getting mixed messages here.